More from T.J. Moe on unions, the NCAA/athlete dynamic

Consider this a companion piece to yesterday's aggregation of former Missouri wide receiver T.J. Moe's Twitter thoughts on the prospect of college athletes unionizing.

We talked to him for a follow-up story on Northwestern football players being granted employee status by the Chicago district of the National Labor Relations Board and Moe is certainly outspoken on the system as it stands today, and how it can possibly be fixed.

Moe, who graduated from Missouri with a degree in business administration, went undrafted out of school and spent last season on the New England Patriots' injured-reserve list before being cut March 10.

Here's the entirety of our interview with Moe:

So, how do you feel about the unionizing effort?

Moe: “Unionizing is a very poor way to try to get this thing done. Making it legal is a different story. Now the players have something to hold over the NCAA’s head. What the players are failing to realize is what is the only leverage a union has? The only thing they’ve got is they’ll strike. What are you going to do? ‘OK, we’re striking. We’re not playing this year.’ Then you just lost your scholarship, we don’t care about your benefits, because not everybody’s going to do that. Right now it’s just football. That would be one union. It would be just Northwestern. You’re running into so many different issues. You’re asking for benefits, salaries, all this stuff.

“First of all, in order to pay one sport, you’d have to shut down other sports. The money’s got to come from somewhere. Now they’re spending it all. If you want to avoid mega lawsuits from Title IX, you’d have to shut down a guy’s sport and a girls’ sport. Or multiple of both. Got to be even. If order to do that, now you’re just taking away educational opportunities, which is really what this whole thing is about in the first place. You’re taking educational opportunities from hard-working athletes who, it just so happens, their sport isn’t at the forefront of popular revenue-sharing. You shut down gymnastics, you just took away an education from 19 girls, some of which will never go to college now. You run into that thing.

“Here’s another thing. Unionize and do what you want, what will Northwestern do? I guarantee you this will happen before they let the whole thing go to crap. They will just shut down their football program. That’ll be the end of it. Unionizing is not the way.

“Now, legalizing the potential of unionizing is your only real way to potentially get the NCAA to budge at all. What they need to do is turn it into a free market. Right now, the NCAA is our government for players. It’s essentially a socialist government: ‘You can make this much. That’s all. You can’t make any more. We’re all going to do it equally. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, what you do, everybody’s going to be the same. We all work in a factory, and that’s all it is.’ Turn it into a free market: ‘Get what you can get. There are still no boosters, we’ll still bust you for doing that stuff. You can’t do anything to high-school kids.’ But once you’re there, let Nike, Adidas, Puma, Reebok, whoever else wants them, sponsor these kids.

“Eric Crouch is a guy I latch onto. They absolutely ruined the prime of his money-making potential. He won the Heisman Trophy and they won the national title. How much money would that kid have come out with? He ended up being a” third-round “pick for the Rams, tried to switch positions, hardly made any money at all, and he played quarterback for the University of Nebraska, which has no professional sports. Tell me everybody in that town -- Nike and everybody else -- when he was the center of the college-football universe wouldn’t have thrown money at that guy’s feet. He would have been set for life. Now the NCAA sticks their nose in and says he can’t do it. Now he’s working a regular job like everybody else and he’s just a washed-up football player. He would have been set for his whole life because of what he accomplished when he was just a kid."

Did you feel like an employee when you were at Missouri?

Moe: "I just wanted to play football. When I got out there, I didn’t care about anything but playing football. I just wanted to be really good, and I worked hard to do that. Getting out of it, when we’re talking about the rights of these student-athletes...all of these Olympic athletes, the rule would be if you’re taking endorsements or anything from anybody, now it’s not legal for you to” play college sports. “You can’t do anything. Olympic athletes, if you’re in college, you can’t have any endorsements. Well, it’s the stupidest thing on the planet. Tell me those kids didn’t earn it. They just won Olympic gold. You are the best in the world at your sport. Yet the NCAA says you can’t accept that. For what reason? No one really knows."

When did you start drawing these conclusions? While you were playing in college or after?

Moe: "I haven’t been putting this together for weeks and weeks. I just thought about it" Wednesday, "and thought about all the issues. As my tweets came is how they came to my head. It’s not like I had all these things and I was just separating them into tweets. I just thought about them -- ‘Well, what about this? What about Title IX? All these different things?’ -- and that’s how they came out. Basically, just my throwing stuff at a dartboard figuring out all the problems with it. But I was trying to play both sides of it, too. Do I think they should have more earning potential? Absolutely. But it is what they can get versus what they are getting.

“The colleges can’t afford to pay them, so how do they do it? Do you think all these athletes would be complaining if they were making all this money from Nike and all these other places? Absolutely not. That would get rid of this whole argument. Allowing that to happen is really the only way to get this thing done. Do I think it’s going to happen? I doubt it. Who knows? But it would save the schools. They would be able to continue to do what they’re doing and providing” for non-revenue sports “and, in fact, the schools would probably get even more revenue because they would start getting endorsements from all the same places the players are getting endorsements from. There’s so much more money to be made. The NCAA is absolutely blowing it."

What about those who say the "sanctity" of college sports is at stake?

Moe: "Who are you to decide what the sport is supposed to be? Where the sport was at in the past is not necessarily where it should be in the future. Yes, we’ve enjoyed it. It’s been awesome. That’s got nothing to do with now. Look at football in the 1980s and look at football now. Is it the same? Absolutely not. Not even close. Football has changed, and you’ve got to change with it. There are kids who could set themselves up for life as a 19-year-old. And yet they’re working a minimum-wage job the rest of their life because they struggled and couldn’t cash in on their own likeness.

“Instead of putting jerseys in stores and not putting their names on it, put their names on the back of the jerseys. Give them a piece of the pie. How much cooler would it be for the guys in the stands if they had a” Dorial Green-Beckham “jersey on their back. All they have is a 15. It’d be way cooler if it had his name on it. It’d be just like the NFL, in that way. Now, you don’t want it to be like the NFL in a whole lot of ways. It’d still need to be a big difference. But in that way, it’d be just like the NFL. Give them a piece of the pie. Same thing with EA Sports NCAA Football. Take the revenue and put it out over the athletes. There’s got to be ways to do it. Put their names in the game: ‘This is T.J. Moe. He’s catching a pass.’ Instead of a white 28 running around who does everything just like I do."

And the arguments about non-revenue sports being left behind if the NCAA adopts a free-market model?

Moe: "Life’s not fair. Here’s why. If I’m better at writing than you are, who’s going to get the job? I am. Let it work itself out. It is absolutely not my fault that people don’t care about women’s basketball. That has nothing to do with me. I should be able to cash in that people do care about football, and people want to sponsor me because of it. I can walk around in a pair of Nike shoes, and they’re going to pay me for it. That is the free market. That’s capitalism. That runs this country. Otherwise it’s a socialist government and it doesn’t work. It’s impossible. Then there’s no reason to work hard. There’s no reason to do anything, because you’re never going to get ahead. This gives you a reason to work hard and get ahead. How much harder would kids work if they were working, not just to be great football players but, ‘Hey, if I reach this stuff, Nike wants me? I’ll be sponsored by them. How awesome would that be?’ It changes everything."

So why can't the NCAA see the merits of these arguments?

Moe: "It’s old-school. First of all, they’re on a power trip. They’re brainwashing their boys when they go through all their issues.” NCAA President “Mark Emmert made $1.7 million this year. You know how much the student-athletes made? Zero. Every single one of them. Collectively.

“Yes, we get expenses taken care of and there are a lot of perks. I’m not saying the schools aren’t fair. What I’m saying is, why are you limiting their earning potential when they can take care of it themselves and it’s got nothing to do with you, NCAA? Not a thing. Why are you then making rules about that? It makes no sense to me. Why are you on a power trip? I don’t know why they’re saying we’re taking the love away from the game. You’re telling me I love the game because I’m getting paid to do it now? What do you mean? I loved the game all the same. It’s just now I’ve got $10,000 waiting at home."

Another addendum. We touched a little bit in the story on what Missouri football players would have to go through if they ever wanted to pursue a similar course of unionization.

Tom Bastian, director of communications at the Missouri Department of Labor, got back to us to shed a little more light on the topic via email today.

Here's the text:

"The State Board of Mediation is the state agency statutorily charged with the responsibility for determining appropriate bargaining units of public employees that request the establishment of such units and for conducting elections to determine the exclusive bargaining representative for those units.

"A petition can be filed with the Board by any public employee, group of public employees, or employee organization claiming to represent a majority of the employees in the proposed bargaining unit.

"The Board would determine whether or not the petitioners were public employees and covered by the Public Sector Labor Law."

So, basically, Missouri football players would have to petition the State Board of Mediation for status as a bargaining unit -- a union -- and then the board would determine whether it fit the description of such a unit under the law.

Not saying Missouri players are even considering this step. Just that, if they do, this would be the course they'd have to take.